Early Haswell processors will reportedly have a USB 3.0 bug

If you're planning on upgrading to Intel's Haswell platform later this year, you may want to wait for the first round of chips to clear shelves before taking the plunge. Hardware.info claims to have spoken with a "reliable source" who says the next-generation processors have a small issue with USB 3.0.

The site viewed a document that Intel reportedly sent out to inform system builders about a bug with Haswell when waking from sleep and using a USB 3.0 device. Apparently, if a system exits S3 level sleep while a user is accessing data on a USB 3.0 drive, their session with that data will essentially end.

For instance, Hardware.info suggests that if you left a PDF document open before putting your PC to sleep, you might be left with blank pages when it wakes up, forcing you to restart the application. Likewise, resuming a video where you left off might require reloading the file or restarting the player.

Although it wouldn't comment on the rumor, Intel is reportedly aware of the problem and it's making partners accept the flaw before purchasing affected processors. Intel is said to be working on a fix that should appear in a later CPU stepping, but it sees the bug as more of an annoyance than anything.

For whatever it's worth, there's supposedly no risk of data loss and it doesn't seem like this will turn out to be repeat of Intel's early 6 series "Cougar Point" chipsets, which launched alongside Sandy Bridge in 2011 and were recalled due to a flaw that caused 3Gb/s SATA support to degrade and fail over time.